Alchymic Journals

say it must follow its line and hold within the circle to the end that nothing may exceed its circle, so that there be no crooked thing and the balance be preserved. Water rushes downhill full of desire to unite with the ocean. Heaven exhausts itself, new times come.
NOW I AM grown old. It is useless to swim against a current, I will turn and go home. I will go to the place I know best—Einsiedeln—to the episcopal see on the tumultuous Salzach, and I will live in the corner house. I will return to the Hermitage where in the water sliding beneath my window I will see reflected the stones of Hohensalzburg fortress. It is time.
NEVER HAVE I known Thy peace, Lord. I have not been touched. All of my life was I a pilgrim, a stranger. I was a stranger, alien, a pilgrim. So let there be sung the first and seventh and thirtieth psalms, and let a penny be given to a poor man by the door with each singing. Such is my will and testament who was christened to honor the Greek from Eresus—Tyrtamos. And I have descended from the soldier that was Conrad Bombast, feudal tenant to a count of Wirtemberg, and my father Wilhelm, who was no community bath-chirugeon but an illustrious doctor that got his licentiate at Tübingen. Aureolus am I nominated by feckless disciples licking my heels hoping to flatter me. And my members have been carved out by God with my conditions and properties and habits bequeathed from that in-breathing of life where things are awarded to men. I do not fear death. Has not the serpent Ourobouros sacrificed himself to himself for the birth of knowledge? Does not wisdom born of adversity dispel subsequent affliction? So much do I understand without understanding, who was christened Theophrastus von Hohenheim, because I would not argue the proceedings of God.
ARRIVED THIS DAY out of emptiness some scrofulous itinerant with his remedy for universal mischief. Serious in aspect, pocked like one half-dead of plague, looped about his neck a green silk ribbon with three octangular medals displaying a new moon and the sun beneath an unfamiliar constellation whose relevance I could not guess. His clear pitiless eyes did not blink—consummate proof of a rogue without goodness to his being, on whose tongue the Lord’s Prayer would fester like monkshood. Should a man’s soul be scourged he may quote celestial spirits and make diagnoses, but as he shall depart from rectitude so must he be absent from paradise. Therefore my visitant was no physician.
Rumors of a wandering magus . . .

I REMEMBER THAT HE CAST NO SHADOW when he shuffled toward us fragrant as a dead mouse or a sulfur pit, rich in shabby rags grilled by the sun—one hand trembling, rachitic, putrescent, colorless eyes plucked out of yesterday’s corpse. Children whistled, dancing behind his back. Women held their skirts. Men stood bewildered and unquiet, worried over ambiguities contrary to reason in the pour of the light. If our gracious Lord be omniscient how should this contradiction be devised?
BY SOME PRIVATE impenetrable sign he signaled to a familiar in the marketplace, so I reflect upon the ways men recognize and notify their equals. Do we frame ourselves at will?
I WATCHED HIM at twilight scribble the name of a spectre with a seal in the hour of Mars which he gave to a crow and muttering over this bird he commanded it to be gone, whence followed from that region where it flew dreadful thunderclaps, evil clouds and rain and reddish phantoms in bursts of splendor, as though he brought a plurality of worlds.
THEY SAY HIS journey began when he fled his father’s house at the age of twelve like a butterfly tethered to a string, racked and furious—secreted inside the pommel of his sword that conducive white powder Laudanum—a child eunuch crowned with ivy and foxglove, surging irresistibly toward the ages. He was not engendered like other mortals, I think, nor would have it so. How else does one explain repetitive misfortune?
I HAVE HEARD that by mystic intercourse with Jews, shepherds, barbers, Romanies, hangamen, acrobats, herbalists, geomants and minnesingers he drew forth knowledge. And each met quick welcome since not one but had a singular message to impart. Consort of rogues, peasants, tapsters, wheelwrights, thieves, jugglers and sectarians, at ease with the devout or impious, vulgar or learned, like some clumsy windy peevish draft-horse he drank, stamped, and belched along the highroad to reproach all that stood amazed. And the preservation of a tortured body some believe he confided to his mind.
OPORINUS HAS TOLD me how he avoided women, that he disdained venery, but I hear he found good reason since he was gelded at a secluded place where three ways meet by an unknown hag while he was a youth. Thus he grew up impotent, emasculated. In his work he fulminated against women—cursing, spewing venomous hate—until at last overwhelmed with disappointment he returned to the village of his birth. There he scribbled and raged and denounced the world. In his forty-seventh year on a chimney corner bench of the White Horse Inn at Salzburg some swift complaint or miasma befell him and without a word he died, having three days previous dictated to the notary Hans Kalbsohr his last testament which I think was duly heard by five Salzburg men and one Steffan Waginger of Reichenthal, and the servant Clauss. His precious implements, palliatives and medical texts he bequeathed to a Salzburg doctor, Andree Wendl. Twelve guldens in coin he left to his executors, Georg Teyssenperger and Michael Setznagel. And to the six witnesses another twelve guldens each. It was the day of Saint Rupert’s festival when he died, which in that year fell upon Saturday. He chose to be laid where the poor are buried.
THAT HE IS gone seems unnatural. Here was one that had urged gold out of idle brass,